HaasMindset

A practical guide for small business founders

How to find the workflow bottleneck that keeps pulling you back in

By Jan Haas · Independent workflow & process automation consultant

You delegate a task. A few hours later, someone needs your approval. Then a customer asks for an update, and you have to chase three people to find out what happened.

Before buying another tool or rewriting every process, follow one piece of work from start to finish. The aim is to see where progress depends on waiting, missing information, or a decision nobody clearly owns.

Pick one recurring workflow

Choose something specific: approving a quote, onboarding a client, handling a customer request, or preparing a weekly report. “Improve operations” is too broad to map. “Move an accepted quote into a scheduled job” gives you a clear starting point and finish line.

Write down what starts the workflow and what counts as done. If two people describe different finish lines, resolve that difference before measuring performance.

Follow a real recent example

Use an actual request rather than the ideal process in a handbook. Ask the people who handled it:

Record the tools involved, including messages, spreadsheets, email, and informal conversations. A handoff in a chat message is still part of the process, even if it is absent from the official documentation.

Separate working time from waiting time

A task may take ten minutes of effort but spend two days waiting for approval. Those are different problems.

For several recent examples, record arrival, handoff, and completion times where records exist. Note which times are confirmed and which are estimates. Then ask whether the delay came from missing information, unclear ownership, limited capacity, or a necessary decision.

Avoid assuming every wait should disappear. A review that prevents an expensive mistake may be valuable. The question is whether the right person receives a complete request at the right moment.

Look closely at the founder handoff

Each time the workflow reaches you, ask:

  1. Does this decision require my judgment, or does someone need information only I have?
  2. Is there an agreed rule that would let someone else decide?
  3. Does the team know who owns the next step?
  4. Is this a normal request or an exception?

“The founder approves everything” may hide several different cases. A routine request within an agreed limit can need a different route from an unusual commitment. Make those distinctions explicit rather than delegating a vague instruction to “use your judgment.”

Choose one change you can observe

The first fix might be a required intake field, a named owner, a clear approval rule, or a shared status view. It does not have to be an automation.

Here is an illustrative example, not a client result: quote requests arrive by email, and every request goes to the founder because nobody knows which ones need review. A possible redesign is to define which requests the team can handle, what information each request must include, and which exceptions need founder approval. Routing can be automated once those rules are clear.

Check whether the change helped

Choose a measure that matches the problem: time waiting for approval, requests returned for missing information, manual handoffs, or the number of routine decisions requiring the founder.

Compare similar work before and after the change. Keep the same start and finish definitions. Record changes in request volume or complexity so an unusually quiet week does not look like a permanent improvement.

If you cannot measure precisely yet, start with a small log. An honest baseline is more useful than an impressive estimate nobody can verify.

Bring this to your next process discussion

If you have one workflow in mind but cannot see why it keeps returning to you, send me a short description at jan@haasmindset.com. Tell me what happens today, who is involved, and where it gets stuck.